HP and Compaq computers appear to be shipping with a buggy version of Norton Internet Security and/or Norton Internet Firewall automatically installed/enabled. Here's the symptoms:

When you try to run GenSmarts it appears nothing happens. In reality, what happened was that Norton Internet Security/Firewall grabbed control of the internet access the GenSmarts upgrade check module does and promptly froze... Norton may or may not have been able to pop a window to ask you if you want to allow the internet access before it froze - but regardless of how you reply, it (Norton/Windows) never allows GenSmarts to continue on - leaving it suspended invisibly in the background. If you try to run GenSmarts again, you'll get a message that it's already running.

If you're experiencing the above here's a way of verifying it...

1) Reboot to make sure GenSmarts isn't running (hung by Norton) in the background.

2) After your computer comes up, disable both Norton Internet Security and Norton Firewall

How To Disable Norton Security

Log on using an account with Adult or Supervisor rights. Open Norton Internet Security.

On the left side of the window, click Internet Status and then click Current Status.

In the Current Status window, click Disable.

How To Disable Norton Personal Firewall

Open Norton Personal Firewall.

On the left side of the window, click Internet Status and then click Current Status.

In the Current Status window, click Disable.

3) Now start GenSmarts. If it works, then that confirms the issue is with Norton, and you should be able to define GenSmarts as an allowable exception to both Norton Firewall and Norton Security, and then you won't have to disable them to run GenSmarts. Or you might consider just using Windows XP firewall instead of the Norton products.

If the above doesn't work, as a work around, you might try this:

1) Reboot to make sure GenSmarts isn't running (hung by Norton) in the background.

2) Navigate to your GenSmarts program directory and run (double click) the program GSEngine.exe This will run GenSmarts directly and skip the update check , which means you'll have to be sure to manually check for updates occaisionally at http://www.GenSmarts.com/versionHistory.asp and subscribe to our support newsletter http://www.gensmarts.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=470 to find out about updates. I suspect that the bug in Norton has something to do with the type of window we use in the update check and that bug may not occur in the regular internet access we do from the main program.

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